Green Space Blooms Festival April 19&21

West Coast ArtBarker Misa Kelly is headed back to Long Island City, NY in 2013 to Green Space to reconnect with East Coast ArtBarker Joanna Nobbe for the . . .  

GREEN SPACE BLOOMS FESTIVAL

PURCHASE TICKETS: on the HOMEPAGE of Green Space's website HERE 

Dates we are performing are

FRIDAY APRIL 19th @ 8:00 pm

Misa will be premiering "Patchwork Chameleon" co-created with Stephen Kelly

and

SUNDAY APRIL 21st @ 8:00 pm

Misa and Jo will be reconnecting to perform their co-created work "Unzipped"

More about these works below.

If you can't make it to see us - there is a lot of GREAT work on the program!  The list of performers is on the HOMEPAGE of Green Space's website HERE 

ABOUT THE WORK

Patchwork Chameleon

The Movement

Misa's short and sweet new solo comes out of a 3 year process of working at "de-dancifying" her body in an attempt to reconnect with a way of moving that is more reflective of the way the human body moves in its natural state.   The movement vocabulary comes out of solo research over the past year, one particularly juicy improvisation and a day at play with Joanna Nobbe Valerie Green invited Misa to generate a new solo for this season's Green Space Blooms Festival and there is nothing like a performance goal to bring something about - so thanks Val!  Stephen Kelly attended all of the rehearsals and played an integral role in developing the work.  

The Sound

With the exception of a few works, the sculpture of the movement has always been generated first, and once chunked out, the sculpture of the sound created.  Earlier in the year Misa was approached by Annie Topete about the music of her outsider artist daughter "Isa" inquiring whether or not some of her creativity might be of interest to ArtBark International.    Misa discussed possibilities with Annie and asked for a CD of her music to listen to.   The sound came into our orbit at about the same time the overall architecture of this new dance was coming about.  Both Misa and Stephen, when they first listened to Isa's world, knew that what they were hearing was unlike anything they had ever encountered before.  Although the compositions, in their original form, did not seem as if they would work for the original notion of using them to accompany improvisation as performance Misa was curious what the outcome would be if she went into the sound and reshaped it.   Annie and Isa both gave Misa permission to do this as a next step.  From Isa's 5 compositions Misa used 3 to inspire 3 new arrangements of Isa's work.  She burned a CD and took the CD in along with some other music to give a test drive for the new solo and - well, a perfect fit!  At least we think so.  We are so very grateful to be creating to Isa's world.  

The Costume

Soft, evocative of dream, tired and aged with a burst of brand spaking new, green for growthful

What we hope audiences will take away from the performance

"It is my sense that in Western culture (perhaps this is true for other cultures), for some reason or another, the bumps in life coupled with social conditioning and a host of other factors, results in aspects of our soul getting caged up.  This work is an invitation to others to uncage the caged part(s) of their soul and find new roles for the aspects of one's multiple self and to integrate these expressions into one's waking state." Misa

We invited Isa to a rehearsal to witness this new creation set to her musical world.  

Enjoy!

Unzipped

The Movement

After the 2011 ADaPT Festival I went into the studio intending to shape something for an upcoming chapter of Cybil Gilbertson's NECTAR series and as hard as I tried to work on what I thought ought and should happen something completely unexpected popped out in a few rehearsals wanting to be danced au naturel, which isn't something I'd ever feel comfortable with performing in my community.  Something about exposure to work from so many artists from so many different countries and cities - the freshness of it all - turned my choreographic notions inside out.    When Jo was out for a visit during her Thanksgiving break I shared this work with her and we decided on the spot that it would be a lot of fun to dance as a duet and we entered into a co-creative process shaping the work as a duet.  The work premiered at Green Space Studios in 2012 for their Fertile Ground series along with two other works, was next performed in Vienna in the shop window at ContraMASS Galerie and at Palais Kablewerks as a part of the 2nd in the ADaPT Festival Series: RAW MATTERS ADaPT Special. It then returned to the USA for a performance in solo form for MAX10 at the Electric Lodge in Venice Beach, and once again as a duet for the MixMatch Festival at the Miles Memorial Playhouse in Santa Monica.  So - it is pretty performance rich by now. We were thrilled when Valarie invited us to share this for the Green Space Blooms Festival!

The Sound

Just our breath - no musical accompaniment.

The Costumes

Normal, natural, from our closets

What we hope audiences will get out of the work

We hope to induce some laughter.  We also hope to facilitate folks (particularly women) making a positive shift with regard to how they relate to the body "au natural."   That they welcome it as a sculptural work of art celebrated over the centuries in the visual arts in sculptures, paintings, and drawings.  For individuals with body issues - we hope the work can help them on their healing path as they seek to learn to love their physique just the way it is.  Part 2 of Unzipped will be performed at Center for Performance Research as a part of ArtBark International and Friends ADaPT Fest 2013 on May 30th at 7:30 pm.  The audience will be invited to participate as observers and visual artists sketching the improvised dance. 

photo of Jo in Vienna after research for Unzipped in the Belvedere Museum. We wanted to make sure we could remember some of the shaping of the sculptures new movement was referencing.